Tips on graphic size and effect on PC performance

[flyatr]

Hi,

is there a recommendation how big I should make the gauge background image? Same size as final gauge size, twice the size? Going for 2x size my EADI will be 1000 x 800 px, it seems kind of large.

Also, will it hit the PC performance if I add several small items as fullscreen pngs with alpha? Better to crop the images down? Full screen is just so easy as I can arrange everything in Skinman and just export, WYSIWYG.

Thanks!

[Amok]

I prefer a 1x1 pixel file witch is dynamicaly scaled by

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img_add_fullscreen("pixel.png")

to keep resources as small as possible.


For other images I do it in the same way.
I use a 1x1 pixel file and scale it on the right position with

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img_add("pixel.png", 100, 100, 10, 10)

I dont know if its better to use a 10x10 pixel picture or use a 1x1 pixel picture and let it scale by the funktion.
But I think its the better way o do so.

[Ralph]

Performance-wise it's better to keep all images as small as possible. There's a pre-scaling function in Air Manager, which you can turn on if you want, it scales down all the images to their correct size before loading them into the video-memory. It takes a bit longer to load, because the images have to be scaled first.

So....using big images with a lot of transparency is easier, but not efficient, also transparant spaces take up video memory.

[flyatr]

That is very good to know, thank you guys.

[frumpy]

Performance-wise it's better to keep all images as small as possible.

About what size are we talking here? I mean now with 4k monitors in the pipeline, it may be prudent
to make those instruments large.

[Ralph]

Of course you can make things large. But for example, when you're making a black background at 4K, a pixel of 1x1px stretched out to 4K resolution would do. Split up the instruments in little parts, empty areas also take up video ram.